The site belongs to a tradition known in Irish as cillíní, the informal burial places used for unbaptised infants, stillborn children, and others who, under Catholic Church teaching, could not be laid to rest in consecrated ground. Because baptism was held to be a prerequisite for salvation, such burials were excluded from parish cemeteries and placed instead in liminal, in-between spaces, often ancient earthworks, old monastic enclosures, or shorelines, places that sat outside the ordinary rhythms of the living community.

The choice of a ringfort, an early medieval circular enclosure typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch and used as a farmstead, was not unusual. These structures were already old and set apart from everyday use by the time the cillín tradition became widespread, and they carried their own air of remove. At Derreen, local knowledge places the burial ground within the southern half of the rath, the raised earthen ring itself, and records indicate that a stillborn child was interred there as recently as fifty years before the site was documented. Within living memory at the time of recording, however, use of the ground had already ceased, with no recollection of burials in the preceding quarter-century. The silence at the site is, in that sense, both literal and social, the kind that settles when a practice quietly ends without ceremony or announcement.